New US ambassador wants speedy progress on transatlantic relations

The US’ new ambassador to the EU has declared her intention to use the remaining months of the administration of President George W. Bush to push for “tangible results” to improve EU-US relations.

Kristen Silverberg presented her diplomatic credentials to Jean-Pierre Jouyet, France’s Europe minister, representing the Council of Ministers, and to European Commission President José Manuel Barroso last week (22 July).

Interviewed in her new office in Brussels, where the bookshelves lay empty and the walls were without pictures, she said: “This is a critical time for US-EU co-operation. As we head into the transition in the US, we’ve tried to be very focused on the things that we think should and can get done.”

Silverberg, whose most recent job was as assistant secretary of state for international organisation affairs, stressed the importance of the US and EU working together on Kosovo, Iran and Afghanistan.

Trade barriers

But she also said that she would be looking to make advances on regulatory issues and non-regulatory barriers to trade.

“There is a lot we can do in this time period,” she said.

She said both sides had an interest in seeing “real results in the near future” from the Transatlantic Economic Council (TEC), which was set up last year to address regulatory and trade matters.

While the TEC currently had “senior-level attention” and there was “tremendous political support” for increased trade and investment links with the EU, the next administration – as well as the EU – might begin to question its utility if it did not deliver, she warned.

Silverberg, a 37-year-old native of Texas, has strong links with the Bush camp. She worked as adviser to Andrew Card, the White House chief-of-staff, “two doors down”, as she put it, from the president. She was then posted to Baghdad as senior adviser to Paul Bremer, the US administrator in Iraq.

Global security

She welcomed a larger European role in global peace and security and said that her government supported the EU’s independent mission in Chad. She expressed support for French ambitions to make defence a priority of its EU presidency and to return to NATO’s integrated military command before the alliance’s 60th anniversary summit next year. She said that Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, had specifically tasked her, together with Kurt Volker, the new US ambassador to NATO, to advance these initiatives.

She said that she had discussed with Richard Morningstar, the former US ambassador to the EU, his experience of the 2000-01 transition from the administration of Bill Clinton to George W. Bush. She stressed that “much of US foreign policy is constant from administration to administration”.

The expectation is that a new US president will appoint a new ambassador. But Silverberg said: “I intend to spend whatever time I have here making the most of it.”

The ambassador is taking tuition in French, but said the EU state that she knew best was the UK.